Shipwrecked Faith

My sins have overtaken me and I cannot see in all my discouragement, frustration, and anger; I lost God. And I didn't care but I was miserable because when I lost God, I lost peace and hope. How sad! And it seems impossible to get it all back or at least just too hard because you think "How did I lose God in the first place?" He's everywhere but it doesn't always feel like that. In fact, sometimes it seems like He's nowhere or He would have helped by now.

My first semester of college I dated a guy that went to college over four hours away from the college I was attending. Two weeks into the semester and we hit Labor Day weekend, that's three days off so I thought it would be the perfect time for a road trip. At the time, I drove a silver Miata, which for those of you who don't know, this is a tiny two seater convertible and it happened to have a small leak in a rear tire. But I was a stubborn, determined, a madly in love 18 year old girl and I was heading to Lubbock, TX. Half way through the trip my tire finally went flat so I stopped at a gas station and had some random guy change my flat. Encouraged by the quick fix, I was on my way again. Did you know that when they say you shouldn't drive too fast on a spare tire there's a reason?! Did you also know that 18 year old girls think nothing bad will actually happen to them? Well, about thirty minutes outside of my destination my flat tire blew out. Let's recap: young college girl, tiny car, blown out flat tire, in the middle of west Texas, whose parents don't know she took a road trip, boyfriend doesn't have a car or friends. I was in a pickle! With all my pride and great wisdom, I got out of my car on the side of this two lane highway and waited. Within about five minutes an older gentleman in a beat up old two door truck came to my rescue. He did not have shoes on and he was pretty rough looking but I hated to judge a book by its cover and he did have a vehicle and said he happened to be on the way to the college anyways. My angel! As it happened, he did take me to the college, we had a nice chat on the ride there, and no funny business but now the problem was how to get my car into town. I got a tow service to drive out and find my car except they made it about two hours outside of town when I had only been thirty minutes out and could not find my car. After finally calling the police I found out that my car had been hit and run over by an 18 wheeler whose driver was looking at a map and crushed my tiny silver car. I never saw that car again. I ended up giving in and calling my dad to tell the truth, ask for a plane ride home and a new car:( It's a crazy story and even now it's hard to remember it being true. I laugh when I recall it because I was so blissfully unaware of how ridiculous it was, how ridiculous I was. What I always thought was that even in a potentially scary moment, even then, God saved me. I didn't deserve it, I lied to my parents, I wasted money, I could've been hurt or killed, just to stay with a boy who, by the way, I never married. It was selfish.

When I left my dorm I had a plan but somewhere along the way I got lost and I was shipwrecked. "I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith."1 Timothy 1:18-19 According to Webster, shipwrecked means lost or stuck usually by accident because you got off course, lost or destroyed things/possessions. It's easy in life to get so focused on the things that we want that we lose track of the things God wants for us. If you're a control freak like me, then you know it's hard to trust God. When we wonder where God is, He's right there, all around us. We want everything now and when it isn't now we think He's doing nothing but God never does nothing. He just does it in His time, not ours. When I look back on my valleys I can't say for sure where God was every second but I know when I came out of the valley I was stronger, He was there, and everything was better than before. Trials aren't a loss at rock-paper-scissors or drawing our name out of a hat, it's God teaching us, preparing us. Whether it be trust, humility, forgiveness, patience, if we remain faithful we come out better, stronger, and with increased faith. Best of all, we don't get stuck on the side of the rode in West Texas heat, hitchhiking with a shoeless man in a pick up truck;)